Paradolox
by OurLadyD
Summary: Short story based on several myths regarding gate keepers.


They say - if you can find him - that he will open any door you ask. No one is certain where he comes from. From some legend or mythos from long ago, but no one told him that his gods were dead and he was myth. You have to know how to find him: he is in the place between places.

Not that saying that tells you much about where to find him.

I found him in the place between awake and asleep. But I heard a man say that he found him between life and death. Either way, it doesn't really matter which place between places you go: if you want it badly enough he is there. When I saw him I thought someone had played a foul trick on a fawn or some such. Or perhaps this was really what demons looked like? Cloven hooves for feet lead to fur, and upwards, to the torso of a man or something similar. But the hands are well wrong, and the head is definitely not human. No human has two giant ram like horns curling on either side of their head. His nose is flat and his eyes are too big, just like his teeth. His teeth are pointed and sharp, as if he might eat you alive. Yet in the same breath his hair is part living plant, with tiny white flowers blooming there. If you ask him what his name is, he will grin with those pointy teeth, and his luminous green eyes flint as they laugh to a joke only he is in on. Paradolox. If ever there was a paradox it might well be him. His seven feet stooped as if you were whispering to him not merely speaking.

I ask him to open a door and he smiles with pleasure. This is what he was made for: this is his purpose and his delight. A service now rarely called upon now, lost along with the ancient gods who imagined him into existence. He only has one key on a cord around his neck, but it's the key that opens all the doors: the ultimate skeleton key. I asked him if he knew the door that led to the gods, and with mischief, he tells me that is not the door I asked for. Hesitating for a moment, as if offering me a chance to change my mind and ask for him to open that door instead. I don't. He finds a keyhole in the earth of the cave. It was not there a moment ago. No: there was the outline of a door, but in a place between places you cannot expect reality to hold fast. He unlocks the door and then stands back to let me open it: an old iron door handle has positioned itself invitingly.

"Have you ever gone through any of the doors?"  
I can't help myself. I had to ask him. Those eyes stare at me amused.  
"From time to time."  
The voice is a rasp, as if it has been an age since last it was stirred. Or perhaps it has always sounded like the rustling of dry leaves in a parched wind.  
"This door?"  
Again I can't seem to help but ask.  
"Not since your kind was very small."  
"And now?"  
I take my hand off that door handle, so I can look at Paradolox.  
"Now you are bigger."  
I would bet my hat he knew that wasn't what I meant, but I wasn't wearing a hat and I didn't want to annoy a thing whose three digits end in sharp looking claws. 

I looked at him and he looked at me. The silence stretched until I thought I might pop with tension. Not once did Paradolox look even remotely uncomfortable in the silence between us. On the contrary: he seemed almost amused.

I was nearly bursting with questions: How old was he? Who created him? How long had he been opening doors? What kind of doors were there? Could you really go anywhere if you only asked for a door there? How did the doors come into being? Did they all seem to form themselves from the earth, or was it just this single door - my door? Was it him, or was it the key that opened the doors?

What was he?

The words hitched in my throat as those eyes looked at me, through me, and in me. He already knew my questions; he knew his answers. He knew the conversation because he had already had it; he had had this conversation so many times, in so many ways. He had seen me in so many faces and voices. I was the same person - in different form - coming over and over, now barely distinguishable from others. He saw Us all, over and over: every person, in every configuration, but always the same. In truth there was only really a handful of Us. He was looking at the same patterns, the same conversations, done over again. For a moment I saw this: I comprehended that the conversation was pointless. And in a way we had already had it, without bothering to speak. I was a part of a series of events, that had happened before, and happened again.

I opened the door and walked through. I completed the last element of our endless cycle. I became him, and he became me: our parts were the same. And even as I woke up to the clatter of a wheezing life support machine - my machine - I knew I would take his place in due time: I would be the skeleton key.

And perhaps that is how he became Paradolox? When he became the reflection of the key?

But now, the memories of the key were fading, even as stark white ceilings slid into fuzzy reality. I was weak, and I was hollow. A shell of what I had before. They would later tell me that the 18 months I had spent in that coma had caused my muscles to wither away, and my tendons to shorten. I would have to learn how to walk; to talk; to feed myself, all over again. Yet I never stopped seeing the patterns, and I forever foresaw the conversations I had. Was having. I had already had them, the people I met I already knew them, long - so long - before they were even introduced. Everything that happened, had already happened, and would happen again. And no matter what we did, things always turned out the same. As if we were all following a script and just playing our parts.

In time, I forgot all about the skeleton key. At least until I once again found myself in the place between places. Only this time I didn't want a door, and I only found that key waiting.

When another arrived and asked my name, I told them I was 'Paradolox'.


End file.
